In Too Deep

Let me place you deep in a scenario, it will take a minute, but I promise it’s worth it.
You have an adequate life, getting what you want done, regularly but not always hitting milestones, life goals, etc, you have fun and have a pretty awesome job. But while in one of life’s various up’s and down’s (specifically on a down this time) you decide that you need to go out, be adventurous and do something different, something fun and out of your comfort zone. As a young adult who just recently stopped wearing obsessively tight pants and has shifted from listening to people screaming hours on end, to the caviar of the rap world, you felt that going to an (almost summer) all-day concert, featuring various levels or hip-hop/rappers would be a perfect solution to get yourself out of this rut. You ask a couple of absolutely fantastic friends, and they both, probably with slight hesitance, agree to accompany you on your trip.

The day of the concert, you all show up in your beat-up Civic, and start the trek from the area of parking, to the area of concerting. Fast forward past all of the food, drinks, ladies (yeah right) and you stand on the edge of the abyss. You can see clearly the stage, peaking across an ocean of floating heads. Carving through the canyons of tank tops, flip flops, beach balls and lawn chairs, your expedition crew slowly snakes their way to a reasonable distance to the stage. Looking back at the ground your team has covered, you estimate the distance to the stage has been nearly cut in half, and that’s more than enough for your satisfaction.

You look over the eleven-thousand people you are standing in the middle of, thinking back on how your brain told you to not go into the dense, impassable crowd, thinking on the warning signs of confrontation between mobs of shady characters slithering just underneath the waves of humans. At any moment, chaos erupting. You laugh. You let yourself splash in this ocean with the rhythmic waves radiating from the stage and vibrating through you.

Heads turn. You don’t pay attention. You’re lost in the music. A massive amount of people are talking. Maybe there is something funny somewhere, you don’t know, you don’t care, you’re enjoying yourself. More people turn, people start shifting, a massive wall forces you from your position in the crowd and just like an ocean, you have to move with the rest of the waves. You turn to see what caused this commotion. Is there a formation of a mosh pit? That would be odd. Maybe a small fight? When you finally get your head turned and try to pinpoint the cause, that’s when you realize the swell that has been amassing.

The surge is already nearly consuming you, at least five-hundred bodies running from a single location. What was it? A fight? A brawl? Or worse, a gun? A bomb? Does it matter? You shudder in panic, nearly freezing and sinking under the waves as other waves frantically flee the surge. You grab your friends arm, and one friend grabs the other, you are on a mission to get the fuck out of there. Carefully but quickly you and your team accurately navigate the waves, dodging near rocks, soaring over wreckage and other obstacles until you feel you are free from danger. Your heart is racing a mile a minute as from shore you look back out at the sea. At the frantic waves continuing to crash on shore, to safety.

What was the cause of this panic? What cut our great journey to a shocking halt?
It was a fucking deep fryer catching on fire and exploding a propane tank.
Three treated for burns, three for sprained ankles.
You enjoy the rest of the concert, peering from the cusp of the sea.